Saturday, August 10, 2013

You might expect something like this from Chick-fil A, but did you know that it’s “Starbucks Appreciation Day,” as organized by Second Amendment enthusiasts in as many as 30 states? Apparently so according to the Facebook page that was set up for it. Might be a good day to test out the java at Dunkin’ Donuts, eh?

You see, this kind of obesity is contagious. The guy in the red shirt will look just like the others in a couple years. When you're continually surrounded by big fat pigs, it's easy for you to let your own eating habits go a little. Gradually, you look like them.

But for gun owners it's doubly bad. Extra large folks can't run ten steps if that's what it would take to avoid a shootout. They can't bend down or easily maneuver their bulk out of the way of a threat. They'd be more likely to resort to the last resort. For them the last resort is the only resort.

Hypocrisy is their middle name. They talk about carrying a gun for self defense or to defend their families while they eat themselves into an early grave. If self preservation were the real goal, they'd push themselves away from the table, and join the local gym.

I shouldn't even mention beer drinking. All the pro-gun commenters around here are models of responsible drinking. TS has only one beer a day. I'll bet these boys in front of Starbucks put away a few more than that.

The father of a 4-year-old who brought a loaded handgun to day care in Maine has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor reckless conduct, claiming the incident was unintentional.

The man, 31-year old Adam Keene, of Madison, placed the loaded, semi-automatic .380 caliber pistol in his son's day care bag when bringing it into his house and then forgot he had done so, said Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney.

The gun, which Keene legally owned, had a round in the chamber and the safety activated.

The gun was later discovered by an employee of the child's preschool day care in the rural central Maine community of Hallowell, near the state's capital of Augusta.

Maloney said she chose not to pursue felony charges because she believed the incident was an accident. She said in a phone interview that the state had extended a plea offer to Keene, who has not yet responded to it.

"If I thought that he'd intended to have the gun go to day care, this would be a very different case," said Maloney. "But I'm optimistic we'll be able to come to some common ground."

You see how they do it? You see how gun-lovin' prosecutors allow gun-lovin' criminals to continue doing their thing?

Local news reportsA suspect in the fatal shootings of four people in two Dallas-area homes was in custody Thursday as police tried to determine what prompted the attacks just minutes apart and whether an explosive was used.

Four people were also wounded in the attacks. The first shooting took place at a house in southwest Dallas late Wednesday and another was about 15 minutes later in DeSoto, some 10 miles away, Dallas police Sgt. Warren Mitchell said.

Investigators arrested Erbie Bowser Wednesday night at the second crime scene, but they have no information about Bowser's relationship with any of the victims, DeSoto police Cpt. Melissa Franks said.

Media MattersThe NRA's newly launched campaign to oppose a California legislative proposal to ban lead ammunition for hunting, Hunt for Truth, has already been pulled from the Internet along with an accompanying NRA press release announcing the initiative. Using archived webpages, Media Mattersdocuments the NRA's repeated denial that lead ammunition poses a danger to wildlife, despite scientific evidence that lead ammunition threatens the survival of the critically endangered California condor.

Now there's a scientific and unbiased description of the lead in bullets, "fairly non-toxic."

Did you get that throwaway line at the end? He'll be eligible for "shock probation" after 30 days and that's something the judge said he'd consider. What the hell is that? Is that the way gun-friendly hillbilly judges really give people a slap on the wrist for killing kids with their fetish items?

A 13-year-old Middletown boy was shot dead Monday in what officials believe was an accident, Anderson Police Department officials said Wednesday.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. Monday in the 5700 block of Park Road in Anderson. Logan Armendariz died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. He was shot by what police described as an "underage family member."

Anderson Police Department reminded people of the importance of securing weapons in their homes. Anderson residents can get free gun lock from the police department.

The parents took some precautions, some. That's what the police chief said. But what the hell good are those precautions if a kid can outsmart them?

Dad should be in jail. That would go a long way to teach all the other gun-rights nuts to be more careful. That would do far more than the insipid reminders from the police that parents need to be more careful.

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- In a case over New Jersey’s requirement that a citizen demonstrate “justifiable need” for a carrying a firearm before receiving a concealed carry license, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that such a requirement “does not burden conduct within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.”

The court also said “it remains unsettled” whether the Second Amendment is even applicable outside one’s home.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

NRA hero and all-around psychopath, Chief Mark Kessler of Gilberton, PA is starting to find out his

yapping ins getting him into more trouble.

Gilberton officials want an inventory of embattled police Chief Mark Kessler's firearms registered in the borough's name.And they want Kessler, who was suspended last week over his profane, pro-gun YouTube videos, to scrub the Internet of any reference to his employment as Gilberton's police chief.

I'm betting NRA Hero Mark Kessler is going to come up short on that inventory.

Yahoo News reportsA gunman with a property dispute showed up at a Ross Township, Pa., supervisors' meeting and opened fire tonight, shooting apparently at random before he was subdued by two attendees, a witness and Monroe County officials said.

Three people were killed in the shooting rampage, and three others were wounded, including the shooter, county officials said. The suspect, who was under arrest tonight, was wounded when he was tackled by one of the township officials at the meeting.

Pennsylvania State Police identified the alleged shooter as Rockne Newell, 59, who they said had long-running property dispute with the town.

His property was condemned Thursday, and he hasn't been in his home since, according to police. He came to the meeting in a car with Texas license plates, police said.

After entering the building, Newell fired a long gun as he made his way through the building. He then retrieved a handgun from vehicle, reentered the building and started firing the handgun before being subdued.

Another formerly lawful gun owner, probably in possession of a concealed carry permit too. Another mass shooting in which the maniac had no concern about the gun-free status of the location. As they usually do, he went to the place of his grievance.

A 24-year-old man was driving his vehicle along Railway Avenue around 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, when the incident occurred.

Twenty-five-year-old Joe Prince of Minot, a passenger inside the vehicle, was taken into custody and charged with Reckless Endangerment and possession of a Loaded Firearm in a Motor Vehicle.

The victim was taken to Trinity Hospital where he was treated for a gunshot wound.

He might have had a concealed carry permit too, we'll never know because no one is checking. He probably had plenty of safety training and instructions about the 4 Rules of Gun Safety. But, you know what they say, accidents will happen.

The San Diego Zoo is one of the organizations the National Rifle Association plans to target as part of its campaign to save lead ammunition.

The Huffington Post reported Monday that the gun lobby had created HuntforTruth.org as part of its effort to block regulations on the use lead bullets. The website lists The Peregrine Fund, Ventana Wildlife Society, San Diego Zoo, California Condor Recovery Team, Raptor Education Group, Center for Biological Diversity, and Natural Resources Defense Council as non-governmental organizations it plans to “expose.”

A coalition of groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, urged the Environmental Protection Agency last year to ban hunters from using lead ammunition because of its effects on eagles, condors, swans and other birds. The National Park Service says that “lead poisoning is the biggest threat facing the successful recovery of the California condor.” California lawmakers are currently considering legislation, AB 711, that would prohibit the use of all lead ammunition for hunting.

The marketplace for firearms on the Internet, where buyers are not required to undergo background checks, is so vast that advocates for stricter regulations now consider online sales a greater threat than the gun-show loophole.

A new study by Third Way , a center-left think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, found that thousands of guns, including so-called assault weapons, are for sale online and that many prospective buyers were shopping online specifically to avoid background checks.

The study focused on Armslist.com— a popularclassified sitesimilar to Craigslist.org that facilitates private sales of firearms and ammunition based on location — and analyzed listings in 10 states where senators voted against a background-check compromise this spring.

“At this point, this is the biggest loophole in the background check system,” saidLanae Erickson Hatalsky, director of social policy and politics at Third Way, an organization that has been active in the gun-control movement for years.

Background checks — designed to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, domestic violence perpetrators or the severely mentally ill — are mandatory for gun sales at retail stores, but not at gun shows or for private sales, such as between neighbors and family members or between individuals online.

The National Rifle Association and other gun rights supporters have advocated against expanding the background check system because they believe doing so would not stop society’s most dangerous people from procuring weapons and eventually would lead to even stricter gun regulations, including a federal registry.

The NRA, in a policy statement on its Web site, notes that most firearms sales online go through a federally licensed firearms dealer in the home state of the buyer. “The reality is that the Internet does not provide any legal opportunity to simply buy a firearm as if it were a pair of jeans,” the statement says.

We're all lying when we talk about the increasing number of women in the gun owning community. I'm lying when I describe how over the past few years, half of the women at my church went out and got carry permits. I'm lying about the black, female law students that asked me to teach them to shoot, and then became gun owners. I'm lying about the increasing number of women I see as customers at gun shows instead of as uninterested companions.

Nice touch, note how gun ownership is increasing among black, educated, church-going women. Of course, Tennessean is just making stuff up which is a hallmark of gunloon scholarship.

The country’s changing demographics may also play a role. While the rate of gun ownership among women has remained relatively constant over the years at about 10 percent, which is less than one-third of the rate among men today, more women are heading households without men, another possible contributor to the decline in household gun ownership. Women living in households where there were guns that were not their own declined to a fifth in 2012 down from a third in 1980.

As much as gunloons wish to portray gun ownership asexploding among women--it's simply untrue.

Java Bowling III, 43, said he got in an argument with 40-year-old Scott A. Campbell because he was trying to take away his friend’s keys to prevent him from driving while intoxicated.The two men fought before Campbell shot Bowling in the chest, according to WJW. Campbell reportedly ran from the scene, but was later arrested in Middleburg Heights with the help of the police Aviation Unit. He was still awaiting charges at Central Prision Unit as of Sunday night.

The 26-year-old, who was killed in a shootout with police after bombs killed three people during the Boston Marathon in April, read up on a number of conspiracy theories and “the rape of our gun rights.”The BBC’s Panorama TV program reported that the material accused the US government of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma bombing in 1995. Tamerlan also had literature that explored the psychology behind mass killings and how the perpetrators “murdered and maimed calmly.”

Fredy CabreraLocal news reportsA Roaring Fork Valley restaurant owner may face first-degree murder charges after allegedly shooting his stepdaughter and her boyfriend, who later died, because he didn’t want them dating.He probably had a concealed carry permit since they're so easy to get, but no one is checking. Who cares when a gun commits murder.What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

The News ObserverMore and more gun owners this year are trying to board airliners with weapons tucked in their pockets and carry-on bags, the Transportation Security Administration says. TSA screeners at airport checkpoints across the country seized 894 guns, most of them loaded, during the first six months of 2013 – 30 percent more than in the same period in 2012.

“We’ve become such an armed society that people actually aren’t thinking about the fact that they’re carrying weapons with them,” [Wake County prosecutor] Willoughby said. “That’s a little bit sobering, to think that we are so accustomed to carrying a firearm with us that we often don’t think about it or realize that we have it.”That, plus the fact that the downside is not all that severe. If these oversights were treated more seriously, like gun misuse should, we'd see a dramatic decline in these reports.

SAYREVILLE, NJ - JULY 08: Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie attends the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund Press Conference at Sayreville Borough Hall on July 8, 2013 in Sayreville, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)Huffington PostA gun-rights group in the bellwether presidential primary state of New Hampshire has warned New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that signing gun control bills passed by his state's Legislature could have consequences if he runs for president in 2016.

The Pro-Gun New Hampshire coalition urged its members this week to call and email Christie to ask him to veto the proposed laws, posing a political dilemma for Christie as he seeks re-election in November in the Democratic-leaning state while also eyeing the national stage.

Christie has a September deadline to sign a number of firearm-related bills seen by their supporters as necessary for tackling gun violence, and the gun rights group is targeting four of those measures.

One bill would ban .50 caliber rifles, another would require police to report lost and stolen firearms to a federal database, a third would create a system for instant background checks during gun purchases and a fourth bill would ban gun sales to anyone on a watch list of militants.

"This is an acid test," said Sam Cohen, executive vice president of Pro-Gun New Hampshire, which describes itself as the state's largest gun rights group.

"If he decides to support these horrible bills, then we in New Hampshire are going to do everything we can to tell our voters not to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary," Cohen said.What do you think? Will he succumb to the pressure and threats. That certainly isn't his persona. He nurtures the public image of a tough guy who dances to his own tune. Besides, as our commenter Alabaman pointed out the other day, maybe it's about time for a national Republican candidate to come out for reasonable gun control laws.What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Which way to happy? Geographically speaking, it's the route to Hawaii, Maine or one of the clusters of blissful cities in California and Colorado.

The map below is based on results from a study of geotagged tweets published earlier this year in PLoS ONE by researchers at the University of Vermont. The team scored more than 10,000 words on a positive-negative scale and measured their frequency in millions of tweets across the country, deliberately ignoring context to eliminate experimental bias. What emerged was significant regional variation in happiness by this calculation, which correlates with other lifestyle measures such as gun violence, obesity and Gallup's traditional wellbeing survey. A sadness belt across the South includes states that have high levels of poverty and the shortest life expectancies.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

A plan by a small Arkansas school district to arm 20 teachers and staff with 9 mm handguns has run aground after the state attorney says the program is not covered by state law.

The Clarksville School District was trying to mount its program using a little-known state law that is meant to apply to licensing private security agencies.

A state lawmaker requested the opinion a day after The Associated Press reported on a plan by the school district in western Arkansas to use more the teachers and staff as volunteer security guards armed with concealed handguns.

"Simply put, the code in my opinion does not authorize either licensing a school district as a guard company or classifying it as a private business authorized to employ its own teachers as armed guards," Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wrote.

A = criminal gun ownersB = law-abiding gunownersAUB =all of the in-between guys, including but not limited to the following.

1. anyone who has ever violated a gun-law but has never been convicted of a felony.2. anyone who abuses his wife or children in any way but has never been convicted of it.3. anyone who is addicted to drugs and/or alcohol but has not yet been disqualified. 4. anyone who has ever dropped a gun or caused a negligent discharge.5. anyone who has become elderly or otherwise physically incapacitated.

I realize there are others, please feel free to mention them in the comments. And I apologize for the disproportionate diagram. The AUB section should be much, much larger.

UPDATE: The diagram is very much out of proportion. Circle B would be much larger than circle A and the overlapping section representing the hidden criminals would be the largest part of all.

Mother JonesWeapons: Of the 143 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and semi-automatic handguns with high-capacity magazines. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to slaughter students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes, along with an AR-15 assault rifle, when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater. In Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza wielded a.223 Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle as he massacred 20 school children and six adults.Here's the full chart, which also shows numerous shootings that are not in gun-free zones.One has to wonder if this high a percentage of mass shootings is done by lawful gun owners, how does that translate into all the other gun violence?What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Authorities have suspended a concealed weapon permit for a Flint-area man who wore body armor and possessed a loaded gun while watching the movie “Red 2.”

Cassidy Delavergne was removed from Trillium Theater in Grand Blanc Township around 8:20 p.m. Tuesday after someone noticed the vest and gun. He was arrested after flashing a fake Central Intelligence Agency identification badge and telling police that he was a federal agent.

Delavergne isn’t charged with a gun crime, but federal authorities have charged him with possessing the phony CIA card.

The FBI said Delavergne was carrying a 9 mm pistol with 34 rounds of ammunition, with an additional 111 rounds of ammo in his car.

I suppose he was not charged with a gun crime because of the concealed carry permit. But, one has to wonder what a guy who carries a fake CIA ID is capable of. It also begs the question, what are some of the other concealed carry permit holders up to?

First Joseph A. Hewitt earned himself a trip to the hospital after accidentally shooting himself Friday night. Then he earned himself a trio of felony charges for allegedly having handling a reported stolen weapon, police said Saturday.

Schenectady Police Lt. Mark McCracken said Hewitt, 21, of Schenectady was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of criminal possession of stolen property following the shooting. He said police received a call at 7:55 p.m. Friday for a man who was shot in the groin at the Imperial Motel on State Street. Police later found Hewitt accidentally shot himself with a revolver when it went off while in his waistband.

The handgun was reported stolen from North Carolina, McCracken said, adding that Hewitt wasn't able to have a gun because of a previous conviction.

This story reminds me of the discussions I've had recently with Texas Colt carry. The way he describes it, this young man is a rarity among gun owners. His type may exist in the criminal world, but among lawful gun owners guys like this are hard to come by.

Of course, I have a different impression. I think there any too many, even among law-abiding gun owners who do stupid stuff like this. We read about them every day, and obviously those that make the news are only the tip of the iceberg. I suppose sticking a loaded gun in your waistband is something you learn on TV or in the movies. It's cool.

Napoleon's Flintlock Fowler is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by the National Firearms Museum. This 20 gauge Flintlock Fowler once belonged to Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821). The firearm is part of the exhibition at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) National Sporting Arms Museum in Springfield, Mo. (REUTERS/National Firearms Museum/Handout via Reuters)

The National Rifle Association has opened an elaborate museum in the American Midwest, displaying nearly 1,000 firearms, including those used by French Emperor Napoleon and Hollywood cowboy star John Wayne, along with subtle reminders of the campaign for the right to gun ownership. The NRA National Sporting Arms Museum opened on Friday at a sprawling Bass Pro Shops outdoor retail store in Springfield, Mo., a politically conservative central U.S. city that is a gateway to the mountainous Ozarks region popular with tourists and hunters.
Admission is free to the 7,500-square-foot (697-square-metres) museum, which has detailed dioramas and displays that were a decade in the planning stages, said NRA officials. "If you are a gun person, you are going to love this place," museum director Jim Supica says in an online video promoting the museum as "one of the premier firearms museums in the world."